


Rekindle

by yoshizora



Category: Xenoblade Chronicles 2
Genre: AU, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 12:36:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13570716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yoshizora/pseuds/yoshizora
Summary: A woman meets a Goddess.





	Rekindle

**Author's Note:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> i was listening to this while writing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hAJBDZe21w&

When the winter winds howl to usher in the night, a woman discovers the temple.

The wood is rotting and its structure upon the verge of collapse, uncared for and unnoticed in the deep wilds. The woman pushes her way inside and finds the hearth a mess of ancient ashes.

Carefully, she brushes through the soot, and uncovers a dying ember.

“You’ve come a long way from home, traveler,” the Goddess speaks.

She looks up with piercing eyes that burn with something so familiarly human. The Goddess gently smiles at that and is then before her, shimmering.

“There is nothing for you here,” she says.

“Not yet.” The woman will not yield.

Her temple had been abandoned for many generations. The Goddess’s fires, which once reached up to the skies, are reduced to this tiny flame that this woman now reverently cups between her hands. Humans no longer care for such things.

The Gods and Goddesses are far from ephemeral, but immortality evades them.

“May I have the pleasure, then?”

The woman turns her gaze down to the ember and breathes upon it, to softly whisper her name.

 

— 

 

_I give you my all, to ask for yours in return._

 

—

 

The ember grows. Never a day passes that the woman does not return to tend to the hearth, ever solemn and unyielding. Then, she simply stops leaving and sleeps by the fire at night, curled up in her fine clothes that have become gray.

The Goddess is drawn to this, to her resolution.

“It has been a while,” she says. The winter winds are no longer so painful to endure. Spring is near. “Since I have felt true warmth.”

“You deserve more,” the woman says.

“Do you truly believe in such things?”

“I believe in _you.”_

And that seems to satisfy the Goddess, as she lightly laughs and strokes the woman’s face. Her flames are fed now, yet never satiated. This… however, could nearly be enough.

Humans, she decides, have yet to all fall from grace. The woman continues to stoke the fires, allowing the Goddess’s curious touches.

 

—

 

Rotting wood is painstakingly replaced with young cuts of timber, and the ashes swept away. No longer does the Goddess feel the aches of her decrepit temple, her body made anew like a snake that had shed its old skin. The hearth is ablaze. Soon, perhaps, she may even return to her former glory.

Unsmiling, the woman waits for her reward.

Long ago, humans took everything the Goddess could offer and left her to the decays of time.

She offers only a poem, with all the flames of her heart wrapped around it. The woman accepts it with heavy sadness.

“I need your swords,” she says. Then, a pause. “I’m sorry.”

 

—

 

_You are in my dreams at night, and in the morning I ask for you._

 

—

 

The woman, a noble bearing the burden of disgrace, marches off to war. From her hearth the Goddess can do nothing to halt her steps. In one hand the woman wields the sword bestowed upon her with the promise of divine protection. In her other hand, a fistful of ashes to be held close to her heart.

The Goddess carries the other sword. In that way, they are still together.

“Promise me of your return,” she had said, her flames kissing the woman’s face, intertwining through locks of hair as dark as crow feathers.

“Your divine retribution does not frighten me.”

“Is that so?” Her voice had rumbled with the threat of an approaching storm, but the woman did not flinch. This had pleased the Goddess.

“I will tend to your hearth until the day I die. That, I can promise.”

And so she watches the woman’s retreating back, blade glinting.

In silence, the Goddess pens another poem for her, as to imprint her steadfast courage and loyalty to memory.

People are forgotten just as easily as the Gods and Goddesses.

People die just as easily as the Gods and Goddesses.

A new winter encroaches her temple when she feels a flame die out, and a sword silently falls to the earth many days away. Her heart, too, falls.

 

—

 

All her poems could do nothing, powerless. The Goddess grasps the ashes of her grief and spins them into a new fire, engulfing her temple and all that had been built within its walls. She rises, a second sun of an azure inferno.

In a tempest of her flames and fury, the Goddess descends. The screams of men burn away in their throats and fall to the scorched earth.

Then, ah, her sword sings with the reunion of its twin. Still, she descends. What good is her judgment in this wretched battlefield?

In a human form, the Goddess cradles the woman against her breast, whispering her poems. Ashes slip through the woman’s fingers.

“Mòrag.”

She weeps, and arrows rain down from the sky.

 

—

 

_And it was said that Brighid’s hearth was forever cold from that day onward._


End file.
